Wright Wordshttps://heathercwright.wordpress.com
Fun with Words and Author Heather C Wright
Fri, 22 Feb 2019 15:08:27 +0000 en
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1 http://wordpress.com/https://s0.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngWright Wordshttps://heathercwright.wordpress.com
Continual Discoveryhttps://heathercwright.wordpress.com/2019/02/22/continual-discovery/
https://heathercwright.wordpress.com/2019/02/22/continual-discovery/#respondFri, 22 Feb 2019 15:00:39 +0000http://heathercwright.wordpress.com/?p=3484I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my own identity and how I’m always discovering new things about myself. When you’re in high school and college, it seems to be expected that you will be making these kinds of discoveries all the time and constantly learning and growing as a person. I think it’s quite sad that our society doesn’t really acknowledge that this process never ends.

I haven’t been very intentional about my personal discovery since finished graduate school. I had it in my head that I knew who I was and that’s who I was going to be. Not so much.

Over the past few years I’ve discovered a lot about myself. None of this is earth shattering. None of this really changed how I live, but it’s given me some insight into who I am and why I am the way I am.

I’ve always been curious, and that’s helped me fall into a pattern of lifelong learning more generally. The most recent example of this was this past fall semester, when I took a statistics class. I manage a system at work that spits out statistical reports every term, and I didn’t actually understand what all the numbers meant or good statistical practices for comparison and benchmarking. I now know what a standard deviation is, why median is often more important that mean, and why everyone freaks out about these reports (because they are often small sample sizes or low response percentages, they’re observational, and they really shouldn’t be compared to one another). It also helps me not freak out about science and diet news because a lot of those studies have statistical issues too.

One of the more surprising things I learned through taking this class is the fact that I had internalized the “girls are bad at math” attitude without even realizing it. I’ve always done pretty well in my math classes. I was in the advanced or honors class, and even took AP calculus in high school (and earned a high enough test score to place into level two of college calculus for non-engineers too). Yet I’ve always seen myself as someone who is bad at math, or at least not good at it. And yet, fifteen years after my last math class, and ten years since my last class of any kind, I managed to bomb my first test and then come back to earn an A in the class. That’s proof that I can do this and I’m not bad at math, I was just a bit out of practice and didn’t properly prepare for that first test.

I’ve never been overly ambitious. Even in high school, I knew that the odds of becoming a bestselling author were low and the odds of being a high earning author were even lower. Writing has always been something I do because I love it, not because I wanted to make money doing it. Yes, there’s a little corner of my mind that wonders what it would be like to make the kind of money JK Rowling makes, but I know that’s highly unlikely. I have a friend whose goal for her writing is to make enough to buy breakfast at Cracker Barrel for her and her dad once a week. My current goal is to make enough money on my books to pay for my tax preparation. (The first year I made about $20 and it cost me $34 to do my taxes, which would have been free if it weren’t for the 1099-MISC…) Not lofty goals, but realistic.

This past November, going into NaNoWriMo, I was thinking about what I wanted to write, and decided I wanted to do something fun. Something just for me. Something that I never had to edit if I didn’t want to. And I had so much more fun during NaNo because of it. I didn’t have to worry about it making sense or what someone else would think about it. It was a story just for me. It was a happy love story with almost no actual conflict and it was delightful to write. Writing is about me. I reminded myself of that. Yes, I publish some of my work. Yes, I love hearing what people think, especially when they like it. But that’s enough for me. It doesn’t have to make money or make me famous (I’m not sure I’d like being famous anyway). It just has to make me happy. I knew that back in middle school and high school when I was first realizing my love of stories, but I’ve rediscovered that recently.

There are other things I’ve discovered about myself over the past few years, but if I cover all of them, this will become far too long, so I’m just going to look at one more thing.

I’ve discovered that I finally have the confidence to be obviously different. My whole life I’ve been one of those people who wishes they could be the one who was dressing in quirky outfits and wearing their personal style no matter what the current fashion was. I had my moments of meeting this ideal, but mostly I was too worried about the consequences and how people would see me. I’ve finally reached a point in my life where I’m confident in who I am, in the work I do, and in my ability to have my work and effort shine through even if I do look a bit quirky. So I died my hair rainbow for Halloween. It was great with my costume (I was an actual rainbow, complete with my own sun and raincloud, images below). But I didn’t do spray in color. I permanently died my hair. So I had rainbow hair for three months (more pictures below). And when the rainbow was starting to fade out more than I wanted and too much of the bleached-blond was showing, I dyed the whole thing purple. (Okay, let’s be real, I had a professional do this both times.)

The reactions to the rainbow hair were really gratifying. The people in my office loved it. People I don’t see very often on campus were excited and happy when they saw me. One of them actually said something along the lines of “I love it. A little rainbow is just what we needed this semester.” It was a rough semester for a variety of reasons. But I was able to bring a little bit of brightness and light into the room with me every time. I love that. The purple seems to be similarly popular and smile-inducing. It’s bright and bold and very me. It’s my favorite color so I can have purple hair, shoes, phone case and skirt all at once. This greatly amuses a lot of people, and they’ve started to notice I wear a lot of purple. The purple hair will also go great with the pieces of my rainbow Halloween costume that I’ll be wearing to work.

The confidence to dye my hair crazy colors might not seem like a big deal, but to me, it’s just one more way that I’m able to truly be myself now. I used to be afraid to admit things to myself or to others, but now, I don’t worry about it nearly as much. The people I care about and the people I work closely with are okay with me as I am. And that’s all I really need.

Life is a continual journey of discovery. I embrace that, and I love it. And sometimes, I discover little pieces of myself along the way. What neat things have you discovered lately (about yourself or anything else)?

Calum ducked behind the partially ruined wall, his heart pounding. He’d just come up to take some pictures. The place was usually either completely deserted or crawling with tourists. He’d thought he’d lucked out and it was a slow day and he’d get shots without people in them, but then he’d heard voices.

He turned and slowly peeked his head up over the wall enough to see the two figures he’d overheard.

Hearing someone say “If you don’t do as you’re told she’s going to have you killed,” had freaked Calum out enough that he’d run away from the pair. Looking back at them, he was glad he’d run. They didn’t look entirely human.

The taller of the two was wearing a dark green jacket. He also had no pants, and his legs had backward knees, thick brown fur, and ended in cloven hooves. Calum was fairly sure there were little horns at his temples too, but he was just far enough away to doubt his eyesight.

The shorter one at least had all his clothes on. They looked like something out of a medieval fair though. Slightly baggy pants tucked into boots that were fastened with leather tied around the outside, a loose shirt tied at the neck, and a tunic that hung over the man’s hips.

Calum ducked down again, not wanting them to notice him. They were either seriously dedicated actors of some kind, or the rumors about the ruins were true, and the two men were some of the fair folk come to the human world.

The death threat actually made Calum hope for the later. Unless it had been a line from a play? The ruins would be a great place to do an in situ performance, or even to film a screenplay, but there was no evidence of an audience or any recording equipment.

Calum wasn’t sure how the two would react to being overheard, or seen for that matter. He didn’t think he could get back to his car without being noticed though. Carefully, he peeked up again. Neither man seemed to have noticed him. Crouching down again, Calum surveyed the slope back toward the parking lot. Maybe he could make it look like he hadn’t seen or heard them yet?

They were still talking, though Calum wasn’t close enough to make out the words now. They didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the rest of the area. Calum peeked up again, bringing his camera with him this time. He wanted one picture, just to prove to himself that he wasn’t crazy. He snapped it quickly then ducked down again. He started moving along the wall, putting more distance between him and the two men. If he was on the other end of the wall, he could pretend he hadn’t seen them and head back toward the parking lot.

When he made it to the far end of the intact portion of wall, Calum took some shots of the stones, it gave him a reason to be down here and a reason to not have noticed the other two men. He slowly stood as he took more pictures, glancing sideways to see if the men were still there.

I’ve included two images to work from. Pick one (or both if you’re feeling ambitious) and write something inspired by the image. You can use something in the image, the feeling it invokes, or whatever the image makes you think of.

If you write a piece and end up posting it somewhere online, please link back to it here on a comment so we can all enjoy it too.

I’ll be posting my own piece next week.

]]>https://heathercwright.wordpress.com/2019/02/08/image-prompt-048-ga-renaissance-festival-wales/feed/12019-02-09 Image Prompt 049 Wales-GA RenFestheathercwright2019-02-09 Image Prompt 049-01 GA RenFest 2011-05-29 1042019-02-09 Image Prompt 049-02 Welsh Dragon05-05-07 0502019 Writing Goals: January Progresshttps://heathercwright.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/2019-writing-goals-january-progress/
https://heathercwright.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/2019-writing-goals-january-progress/#respondFri, 01 Feb 2019 18:51:20 +0000http://heathercwright.wordpress.com/?p=3482So, today’s blog post is late (but still on Friday!) and I don’t have any good excuses. I have lots of excuses. I’ve had a cold, my husband has had a worse cold, I was the Dungeon Master (DM) for my first session of a co-DMed Adventure Guild campaign of Dungeons and Dragons last night, and I’m sure I can think of more. But none of those are good excuses. I had time. I just spent it doing other things.

Most of my January didn’t look like this week has.

I’m doing a challenge this year where I am trying to spend at least 240 of the 365 days of 2019 doing at minimum 20 minutes of creative work, be it writing fiction, editing fiction, world building, character creation, or other related items. This averages out to 20 days each month. There are months (like November) when I’ll be hitting a higher number. So some other months (like December) I can safely work on 10 or fewer days in the month.

January has been a good start for the year. I worked on 24 of the 31 days, which is 77% of the month. Shout out to all the NaNo folks who have continued to join me for a 20-minute sprint at 6:50am weekday mornings. That’s been helping me get my minimum in a lot more often that I might have otherwise.

I have not been working on book two of Swords & Shields as much as I’d intended. I have written several prompt exercises, started a few random story ideas, and generally explored characters and scenes. February will be a dive back into book two. I will report back to let you know how successful that declaration is. I have partial feedback from one beta reader, and another who will be able to look at it later in the year. My goal is to make all the edits needed based on reader one so that reader two can have the updated version.

If I did a good job during the last major revision of book two (which wouldn’t have been the same without my beta readers), then I’m hopeful that this round won’t need as much work. I did basically rewrite from scratch though, so I might have introduced more issues than I solved. We’ll see.

I hope all of you are doing as well on your 2019 writing goals as I’ve managed to. If not? February is a brand new month, don’t worry about January and just push forward to meet your February goals.

]]>https://heathercwright.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/2019-writing-goals-january-progress/feed/0IMG_2726heathercwrightSelf-Care: The Importance of Staying Wellhttps://heathercwright.wordpress.com/2019/01/25/self-care-the-importance-of-staying-well/
https://heathercwright.wordpress.com/2019/01/25/self-care-the-importance-of-staying-well/#respondFri, 25 Jan 2019 15:00:01 +0000http://heathercwright.wordpress.com/?p=3480You hear a lot about self-care these days. This is part because the work culture in the US is not a healthy place. There’s constantly a demand to do more with less. More work, more productivity, with less pay, less time-off, and less of everything else in your life. This week I tried to practice better self-care than the system usually endorses.

The nice thing is that my office, and my supervisor in particular, want me to take time off and rest when I get sick. I spent most of this week felled by a cold, which is why this post is so short. Normally I have more time and energy to write and edit these. This week, I did almost nothing that wasn’t absolutely mandatory from Sunday to Thursday. Thankfully, I’m feeling much better today.

I didn’t write for most of the week because the cold had hit me that hard. I’m not letting myself feel guilty about that, or being out of work for half the week. US job culture wants me to feel guilty about taking time off from work, but taking the time off to rest and get better is much better than me going to work, spreading my illness around, and getting far less done because I’m feeling miserable. I’m lucky that I have the sick time and supportive work environment to take the time off that I need. Far too many people don’t have one, the other, or both. I’ve been in those jobs. They’re kind of awful.

Letting my writing be on hold when I’m sick is something I haven’t always been good at either. I’d want to do something that felt productive, or I wouldn’t want to lose the momentum I had. I think leaving things alone and letting myself recover was the better choice. I write better when I’m feeling well.

All this is to say, that it’s important to take care of yourself physically and mentally if you want to write well. Don’t like work or life overwhelm you and take away the energy you need to be creative. Take the time to get better when you’re sick. Take the time to eat a healthy meal. Take a walk. That walk might be exactly what you need to get your next great idea, or realize how to get past the point you’re stuck on.

I hope you all take good care of yourselves as we get through the end of the flu season.

Caleb walked along the side of the rode with his arms wrapped around himself. The snow was still falling slowly down around him as he trudged along. He was glad for his thick winter boots and his heavy winter coat, but even than wasn’t much help when he’d been out in the swirling snow for more than two hours. He hadn’t realized how far in the middle of nowhere he was when he decided to walk toward civilization instead of staying with his car.

It had probably been the right decision because he still had a dead battery in his phone and he hadn’t seen a single car on the long stretch of highway he’d walked so far. He knew his aunt lived in the boonies, but hadn’t expected his car to die half way between town and her place.

He crested a hill and paused at the top. There were some buildings ahead, that he didn’t actually remember passing on the way down. Maybe he hadn’t been looking far enough from the highway? Or maybe he’d stumbled off the highway and was now hopelessly lost. The buildings still seemed like a good bet. They might have a land line he could borrow to call his aunt or a tow truck.

Caleb started down the hill, still walking along the road, which was nominally cleared, so that he wasn’t wading through the foot-deep snow.

As he got closer to the little cluster of buildings, he saw a brown leather couch sitting in front of the fence near the road. It was covered in snow like everything else, but it still looked so inviting. Caleb shook his head. He wasn’t that tired. He didn’t need to sit down on a couch in the snow. With his luck, he’d fall asleep and end up dying of exposure.

Just past the couch was a wooden gate that stood open at the end of what looked like a gravel driveway. It wasn’t cleared of snow enough for a vehicle, but he could see furrows that meant a human being had been up to the mailbox and back some time in the last day, so Caleb followed the tracks down the drive toward the buildings.

As he approached, Caleb could see that the closer building was a barn, followed by something else that was probably another barn or a storage shed of some kind. Past that another hundred yards or so was an old farm house.

The barn was closed up tight, but Caleb could smell animals as he walked past it. A working farm would have people around. No family would abandon their livestock even for a storm like this. Hope made Caleb move a little faster as he trudged through the snow toward the house.

There were three steps up from the drive to the porch of the farm house. There were two pickup trucks and a little sedan parked off to one side, and Caleb thought he saw light coming around the curtains of one of the front rooms. He knocked his boots together to get the bulk of the snow off them and shook his coat out on the first stair, then climbed up onto the porch. It was a big wide, wraparound style with a couple rocking chairs on one end and a porch swing on the other.

The mat at the door said welcome, which Caleb hoped was promising. He raised his hand and knocked.

“Not that I know of,” someone called back. Through the door it was hard to tell anything about the voices.

Caleb smiled when the door opened, pushing his hood back and hoping he didn’t look threatening.

The young woman who opened the door looked utterly confused. She was a little under five feet tall with her brown hair pulled back in a braid, wearing jeans and a heavy gray sweater.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Caleb said. “My car broke down, and I was hoping you had a phone I could use since mine’s dead.”

“Dad,” The girl yelled over her shoulder.

“Who is it, hon?” her father asked as he walked up behind her. He was definitely her father. They had the same nose and the same pale blue eyes, but he was over six feet tall with thickly muscled arms shown off by the blue t-shirt he wore with his jeans.

Caleb repeated his apology and request to use a phone. “I was on my way to see my aunt when the storm caught up with me. I hadn’t expected the snow until this evening and then my car died.”

“Come on in out of the cold,” the man said. “We’ll get you sorted out.”

“Thank you, sir,” Caleb said in relief.

The man opened the storm door and Caleb stepped inside, the warm air making his cheeks hurt and his eyes water. He blinked trying to see, and managed to identify a neat line of shoes beside a bench next to the door as well as his host’s bare feet peeking out below his jeans.

Caleb sat down on the bench and pulled his boots off, not wanting to track snow through the kind man’s house.

“You can leave your coat on the bench and follow me to the kitchen,” the man said.

“Thank you very much, sir,” Caleb replied. He stood up, careful to avoid the snow already melting off his boots, and shed his jacket.

I’ve included two images to work from. Pick one (or both if you’re feeling ambitious) and write something inspired by the image. You can use something in the image, the feeling it invokes, or whatever the image makes you think of.

If you write a piece and end up posting it somewhere online, please link back to it here on a comment so we can all enjoy it too.

From the fruit punch cup flying and coloring the dictionary pages pink, the marbled edges that almost look intentional now, and the many incorrect insults my sister made me look up after I used them on her.

I am from fridge magnets, photo albums, computer files, old letters, and boxes of slides.

From time spent reminiscing, memories of loved ones, and family history.

From stories over crossing the Atlantic, founding towns, train wrecks, and weddings.

]]>https://heathercwright.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/where-im-from-2019-edition/feed/0Heather Rainbow 2018-10-26 squareheathercwright2018 Writing Year in Reviewhttps://heathercwright.wordpress.com/2018/12/28/2018-writing-year-in-review/
https://heathercwright.wordpress.com/2018/12/28/2018-writing-year-in-review/#respondFri, 28 Dec 2018 15:00:52 +0000http://heathercwright.wordpress.com/?p=3469It’s been an overall very productive year. I’m much happier looking back at my 2018 writing year than I was looking back at my 2017 writing year. There was a lot of busy and a lot of stress, so there was less writing overall than I wanted in 2018, but I did make a lot of progress on the second Swords and Shields book and I’m hopeful that I can get it in shape to hopefully start on copy editing and cover design some time in 2019.

I’ve also gotten a good amount of drafting done this year. I reread my 2018 NaNoWriMo draft recently, and I think it actually turned out to be a good zero draft. I originally wrote it more as an exercise in happy storytelling and something to de-stress with during the craziness that NaNoWriMo as a local leader is. I’m quite pleased that it’s turned out to be as good a basis for a solid story as it is.

The thing I’m proudest about this past year with my writing is the work I’ve completed on Swords and Shields book two. I did a good amount of work on it last year, and then received my feedback from beta readers leading up to the new year. I spent several months reorganizing, replotting, and then rewriting the entire book. I think only one or two scenes survived largely intact. Thanks to an amazingly ruthless red pen from one beta reader (thank you so much Paige!), I was able to really trim down the unnecessary parts and rewrite only what was truly needed. The next set of beta readers has the draft now and hopefully I’ll have what I need to do one final heavy revision pass and then I can move on to finer details and then get things rolling for copy editing, cover design, and getting the book out into the world.

That is definitely my main writing goal for 2019. To that end I’ve joined a habit goal community for 2019, but I’ll share a bit more about that in the new year.

The work on book two has been the bulk of my writing work for 2018, so I don’t have much else to discuss here, but it’s been a lot of very productive work and the book is so much better than it was thanks to my wonderful beta readers’ help.

I hope you’ve all had wonderful productive years in writing, or whatever you do and that you’ve continue the journey with me into next year. May you all enjoy the last week of the year and have a lovely New Year’s.

]]>https://heathercwright.wordpress.com/2018/12/28/2018-writing-year-in-review/feed/0Rainbow Cake 2018-03-30 26heathercwrightImage Prompt 047 Response – The Final Step Beyondhttps://heathercwright.wordpress.com/2018/12/21/image-prompt-047-the-final-step-beyond/
https://heathercwright.wordpress.com/2018/12/21/image-prompt-047-the-final-step-beyond/#respondFri, 21 Dec 2018 16:00:23 +0000http://heathercwright.wordpress.com/?p=3326I selected the image of the tower in Ireland for my sprint this week. Twenty-minutes of writing and a quick copy edit later left me with the below scene. Enjoy!

The Final Step Beyond:

Cillian sat on his headstone and waited.

Well, sat was a bit of a stretch. He hovered just above his tombstone positioned like he was sitting. It was as close as he could manage these days. At first, he’d been able to interact a bit with the physical world, but now that he’d been dead for more than a century, he passed through pretty much everything, inanimate or animate.

It made for an exceptionally boring life most of the time.

At least he could still people watch. It was by far the best thing about his particular graveyard. It was a famous old church, or the ruins of it anyway. There were always busloads of tourists wandering around. He might not be able to interact with them, but he could still see and hear them.

Today there seemed to be about four different groups milling around. One bus had off loaded about thirty white-haired elder types. The next had a wide range of ages, including children, many of whom wore the same shirt. He thought it was an advertisement for some kind of religious group. The third might have been some kind of class trip. They at least all had British accents of some kind or another. The fourth was the smallest group, with only about a dozen, mostly in their teens and twenties. They’d gotten off a smaller, dirtier, yellow bus.

None of the groups seemed to interact with the others. They only spoke to people in their own group. He watched them all take pictures and point at things, but most of them stayed up near the still intact parts of the building. Only a few of those from the last group in the little yellow bus came down to walk among the graves.

Cillian noticed that people didn’t seem to have much respect for graves anymore. They walked along not carrying where their feet were or whether they were standing over someone’s final resting place. Granted, the paths weren’t maintained any longer, and the world seemed far less religious than it had been in his day, but it made his sad to watch people walk over so many graves without any concern at all.

That’s why it was so fascinating when he saw one of them purposefully walking along the bounds of the graves. She kept her eyes on her feet to make sure she was stepping properly between resting places, never disturbing those who might have been resting below, or as Cillian above, their last place of peace.

She walked all the way down to the wall, stopping there so she could take pictures of the tower.

Cillian floated up a little, turning so he could continue watching her. It had been decades since he’d seen anyone care about where they stepped.

She lowered her camera and turned back toward the graveyard. Her eyes swept across the grassy area before coming to rest on Cillian’s headstone. He knew she had to be looking at the stone, because it looked so much like she was looking at him, but that wasn’t possible. No one could see him. That wasn’t how the afterlife worked.

She raised her camera again and took another photo before she started picking her way across the graveyard once more. Cillian watched as she approached his grave, carefully walking between the others until she was standing close enough to read his tombstone.

“Cillian O’Brien,” she said aloud. “Is that who you are?” she asked, looking Cillian in the eye.

Cillian stared at her. Surely she was just being fanciful.

“Can’t you talk?” she asked.

“You think you could hear me?” Cillian replied.

“Of course I can hear you,” she answered, smiling at him.

“No one’s ever heard me before,” Cillian said.

“Really?” she asked. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Cillian just stared at her.

“It must mean this country has been without a guardian for some time,” she added. “I’m glad they sent me along.”

“Guardian?” Cillian asked.

“Yes, a guardian,” she replied. “Humans seem to think we’re some kind of special angel. But really, we’re just caretakers for those who have taken the first step beyond.”

“Never heard of them,” Cillian replied. Was he actually having a conversation with a living person?